LEC052011- ANU.S - MECHANICS OF WRITING.

  MECHANICS OF WRITING

                  PUNCTUATIONS

               Punctuation plays a prominent role in academic writing. The usage of punctuation marks will make our writing easier to read and understand. It may changes the meaning of the sentences too. The meaning of the sentence may differ by the use of different punctuation marks. 

     Eg:  "woman, without her man is nothing"

            "woman: without her, man is nothing"

           There are fourteen punctuation marks that are commonly used in english. They are  period (.) , comma (,) , semicolon (;) , colon(:) , dash(_) , parentheses () , brackets ([]) ,braces ({}) , apostrophe (') , quotation marks (" ") , question mark (?) , exclamation mark (!) , and ellipsis (...). 

PERIOD: (.)     

            Period is used in the end of the declarative sentences and statements. And also used for abbreviations.

COMMA: (,)          

             Comma is used to indicate the separation of elements and ideas in a single sentence. Also it is used in the number sequence and dates. It is used to separate the two complete sentences.

SEMICOLON: (;)

               It is used to link two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. When a semicolon join two or more ideas in one sentence, those ideas are the given to equal rank.

COLON: (:) 

               Colon often precedes an explanation, a list, example and a series. It is also used between hours and minutes in time, titles and subtitles of books.

DASH: (--)

            It is used to separate words into statements. There are two types of dashes: EN dash and EM dash.
 
EN DASH : Twice as long as a hyphen. It is used in writing or printing to indicate a range, connection or differentiation.

EM DASH : Longer than the en dash. The em dash can be used in place of a comma, parentheses, or colon to enhance readability or emphasize the conclusion of a sentence. 

HYPHEN: (-)    

             Hyphen is used to join two or more words together into a compound term and is not separate by spaces.

BRACKETS: [ ]

              Brackets or square brackets are used for technical explanation or to clarify meaning.

BRACES: { }

               Braces are used to contain two or more lines of text or listed items to show that they are units. These are most commonly used in computer programming and mathematics.

PARENTHESES: ( )

                 Parentheses are curved notations used to contain further thoughts or qualifying remarks.

AN APOSTROPHE: ( ' )

                  It is used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters from a word, the possessive case, or the plurals of lowercase letters

QUOTATION MARKS: (" ")

                  These are a pair of Punctuation marks used primarily to mark the beginning and end of a passage attributed to another.
                   Single quotation marks (' ') are used most frequently for quotes within quotes.

Ellipsis: (...)

                   It is most commonly represented by three periods. Ellipsis are frequently used within quotation to jump from one phrase to another, omitting unnecessary words that do not interfere with the meaning.

QUESTION MARK: (?)

                   It is used to indicate a direct question when placed at the end of a sentence.

 EXCLAMATION MARK:(!)

                   It is used when a person wants to express a sudden out cry or add emphasis.


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